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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866640">Herald of Zaun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexmage/pseuds/Hexmage'>Hexmage</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>League of Legends</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:40:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,221</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexmage/pseuds/Hexmage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one-offs about Viktor, mostly originally published on my Viktor blog over at heraldofzaun on tumblr.<br/>Various warnings apply for each chapter, and will be noted at the beginning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Justification</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Lots of off-screen death and a man whipping himself into a dictatorial frenzy. Poor, poor Creator Viktor.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Viktor ignores the first Void attack. There’s pandemonium in the streets and minor casualties - but people die every day in Zaun and he’s long since learned that he can’t save everyone. He’ll help those that come to him, provide aid in the aftermath, but he is not a fighting man. Besides, the threat of the Void was something distant… making this attack a fluke and nothing more.</p><p>The second time a violet, violent portal opens up over Zaun, Viktor takes notice. Chittering monstrosities sweep through the streets, eating anything in their path. Those caught outside suffer if they move too slowly, Voidlings biting into them just as they bite into concrete and rebar. Once is a fluke. Twice is a coincidence.</p><p>It’s the third, the fourth, and the fifth attacks on Zaun that get his attention. They come in quick succession, with progressively larger and larger beasts tumbling from lightning-illuminated portals to a plane that has far too many <em>teeth</em>. It’s not just Zaun’s problem, too - Piltover is under siege and Demacia has lost scores of their soldiers to the fight - but Viktor can no longer stand idly by, only helping after the damage has been done. The Void is a threat to Zaun, to him, and to his own future. He’s not a man of weapons, really, but what is the point of his Evolution if he cannot adapt to new and uncertain times? Zaun’s government is doing nothing beyond the norm - pretending as if business-as-usual is something rational and achievable. If anyone in this city wants aid, they’ll have to find it themselves.</p><p>His first robots are small things, armed with machine-cut blades and lasers that are a modified version of his own. They handle smaller Voidlings just fine (he’s started to classify them - some show signs of intelligence, and he’s read on how Shurimans refer to the beasts) but are easily dispatched by the ‘Zix species or anything larger. They even have trouble with the ‘Maws, truthfully, but that’s on account of the acidic spit. Viktor has his financiers - loyal people, both to the Evolution and to him - but even they cannot pay for shipment after shipment of raw metals. And his production rates are far too slow. He needs automation. Factories. Warehouses. He casts his eyes towards the industrial district, with smog so thick that buildings loom like forsaken giants.</p><p>It’s for the greater good, taking over the industrial district. No one else has stepped up to save Zaun. No one else is making robots to fight the Void. Some people are still acting as if this is not a fight for Valoran’s very survival, and factories are still producing non-essentials. So much wasted material. He knows what to do with it. <em>He</em> knows what should be allocated where. So he storms the district with a swarm of his robots, “convincing” foreman after foreman and owner after owner of what their new tasks should be. The fear in their eyes hardly gives him pause. It’s what needed to be done, and he may as well be the man to do it if no one else will. Zaun must survive. The world must survive. And for that he needs to hold the reins of Zaun’s industry, steer it to create robots rather than useless baubles. There’s no time for such things in a war.</p><p>Viktor’s robots increase exponentially in number and size with the heart of Zaun in his grip. They repel the Void, slashing at tendons and burning through soft flesh, but never quite manage to bring one of the beasts down. Until they do. It’s a ‘Gath of all things, bloated and massive off of its feastings, and Viktor wastes no time in having it carried back to the industrial district. A warehouse there was set aside for such an occasion, painted a clinical white and sterilized. The floor is a fine enough substitute for an operating table. He takes a scalpel in his hand and makes the first incision, purple-black ichor oozing from the cut. The behemoth is still warm as Viktor works, trying to divine the Void’s strength from its entrails as if he were a haruspex. Each cut reveals more alien biology, more madness, and it becomes apparent far-too-quickly that the Void was far more unfamiliar than previously believed. But he can make sense of this madness, with his mismatched hand-and-glove stained the colors of victory.</p><p>The first Battlecast is a labor of logic, of untangling the confusions of biology and replicating their outputs in machinery. Speakers replace toughened larynges, gunmetal replaces flesh. It has intelligence but not sapience. Why give a war machine the ability to reason? It’s not as if the Void gives its soldiers that luxury. Viktor watches through its optics as it - Battlecast Prime Cho’Gath, wearing the name of the subspecies that Viktor now knows every inch of - tears through Voidlings like nothing else. It’s a powerful asset, but a unique one. More are needed. He recalls it when the battle triumphantly closes, sending it to march through Zaun and proclaim victory. No one celebrates in the streets.</p><p>He’s the creator of the Battlecasts now - or, simply, the Creator - not the Machine Herald. The beasts that stand waiting in warehouses mimic subspecies after subspecies of the enemy. One of them can go toe-to-toe with approximately 3.7 of their organic counterparts, testing confirms. But it is much harder to make a machine than a beast, and the Void’s own “factories” certainly produce more than Zaun’s. But its never-closing gaze has shifted away from Zaun towards Piltover, where the oh-so-cleverly named <em>Resistance</em> has sprung up against him. Some people would never see him as a savior. <em>Dictator</em>, Jayce accused. <em>Madman</em>. <em>Megalomaniac</em>. <em>Tyrant</em>. It didn’t matter what others tried to label him. The Creator was Zaun’s only hope against the terrors of the Void, and anything he did was to <em>protect them</em>. The endless cameras to watch for Void activity. The patrols to keep peace. The dissolution of politicians, with their false promises and useless bleating. He was in control. <em>He</em> was saving Zaun and its people.</p><p>And if they had to be brought to kneel to accept his guidance, so be it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Apotheosis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Existential horror via aging? Descriptions of dying, but-not-really?<br/>Full Machine Viktor has his own issues, too. Viktor just has issues.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was forty-eight when he retired from the League, sent off with a smattering of applause and not a single Summoner looking at the lenses of his mask. </p><p>Fifteen years of service to the Institute, seeing the faces of other Champions line with age or disappear from the roster to be replaced with more youthful counterparts. The immortals and nonhumans stayed for the most part - Kayle’s contract would far outlive the Institute itself, and many of the offworlders that she counts herself among have found that this institution is more of a home to them than Valoran, but… There have been some changes.<br/>Jayce retired five years previous. Viktor does not particularly care why - something about his cartilage eroding away after a decade of running and leaping and fighting for his life - but he knows that the man is not much more than a socialite now.<br/>Orianna is still in the League, her clockwork form archaic by modern-day standards. Only hobbyists and the old guard of Piltover’s scientific community use gears for the majority of a project now, as magic-touched circuitry far surpassed the potential of anything else.<br/>Viktor never particularly cared to know about many of the other champions that served during his time. Warwick was put down years ago when his bestial nature overpowered his last shred of reason - Soraka had cursed more than his form, it seemed. Jinx’s reign of senseless destruction was finished with a bang when she set too short of a fuse. Blitzcrank… Viktor does not keep up with the golem, but he still serves in the League. They have hardly talked. It is for the best.</p><p>The Summoners probably cheered after his send-off, free of having to look into his mind. His thoughts are not <em>typical</em> in their manner, he has found out, both in their content and style. (He took great care to learn how to shield his mind, of course - thinking of a project calls up images of it and he will never trust another with that level of access to his work again - and so the only thoughts Summoners can pluck from his mind are those related to the task at hand.) He has heard enough half-muffled thoughts from junior members of the Institute to know that they are convinced that his unique nature comes from tampering with his brain.<br/>There are no scars on his temples.</p><p>He retired because the League no longer held anything of interest for him. Viktor has lost count of the number of time his abilities on the Fields have been tweaked in the name of balance. He had to report every new surgery (from knee to hip, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder… right hand replaced, right forearm - the list goes on) and every new model of prosthetic, lest his technology provide an unfair advantage over the hard-earned skill of others. <em>Balance</em> is the reason guns do not consistently beat swords, no matter how magical the steel of the latter. The Institute is set on giving each nation a fair chance in its geopolitical decisions.<br/>So they allow Demacia to stick to their principles as written in <em>The Measured Tread</em> and Ionia to their traditions. How they don’t see that their histories will be their undoing is a particularly human failing.</p><hr/><p>Viktor is well-aware of the nature of time. He does not have enough, he worries at fifty, to do the one thing he has wanted <em>desperately</em> for nearly two decades. His augments are strong, it’s his damnable flesh that is weakening after those fifteen years. Organs rebelling against their assigned tasks - there is a murmur in his heart when he listens, and nutrition seems harder and harder to get - as pain lances across the ports between flesh and metal. It is not faulty work on his behalf. It is the failure of the human form.<br/>Zaun’s life expectancy, when one accounts for the drop caused by infant mortality, is still lower than that of most other Institute-recognized nations. He knows this fact well, knows its source is the same thing that gave him his white streak, his hand, his internal deformities that he has known about since his youth when his father sat him down and told him with a gentleness unbecoming of a Zaunite surgeon. If he can’t save himself first…<br/>He turns away from his impossible task and sets on another, if only momentarily.</p><p>The robots are small, gold-plated things - meant to withstand the corrosion of Zaun. They function under his control, in the laboratory that he spends his every day in (at one point he’d brought in a cot, the travel from his now-unused home cutting down on precious time) now. They will be autonomous if necessary, the fleet of them equipped with enough intelligence to target the worst of the pollution. Giving them <em>sentience</em> is out of the question. He knows no being that can think for itself should be pressed into a job it does not choose, no matter how lofty of an ideal that is in Zaun.<br/>So they clean, or at least organize the waste and toxins. The battle is hopeless unless the factories change their practices, but it is something. Perhaps they will one day. Perhaps he will be the cause.<br/>The diversion took two years, and continual production will take longer. He is fifty-four now, but at least he has made a change if his body fails him tomorrow. A small change. A failure of his goals. He must keep working, until his dying breath if he must.</p><hr/><p>It is when he is fifty-six, hair long since grey (it had started going during his tenure as a Champion, he remembers) and body still on its inevitable decline, that he <em>finally</em> finds the missing piece. How to transfer, not copy. How to know that it will be <em>him</em> in the golden chassis he has created, not <em>a</em> him. He would have taken the latter option if necessary, knowing that his work is larger than himself or even Zaun, but this way his name will not be spoken of as a partial success (which is truly just a failure).</p><p>The machine is ready. He has familiarized himself with the theoretical process - he will sit, his mind linked with that of his new form via a helmet. His processing will be matched and then slowly offloaded until his body’s base functions cease and it dies, leaving him alive and well as a machine.<br/>He dons the helmet, technology whirring to life as his vision is blocked out. Emotions he thought were gone long ago return, perhaps to say their final goodbyes. Hope. Excitement. He can <em>feel</em> the sensation of being in two places at once, two sets of metal feet placed upon the floor, and <em>it is exhilarating</em>.<br/>It is fear next as the transfer nears its completion. His voluntary motor control has gone over to the other, presumably, but he had locked the chassis’ joints until the deed was done to prevent an accident. He cannot move. His senses are just the same, only sensation remaining as something that feels like a cruel joke at the moment. At least those inflicted with locked-in syndrome retain their vision. He feels impossibly small, impossibly trapped, eyes burning as his brain <em>tries</em> to get them to blink.<br/>Then the involuntary functions leave him. His chest is still as everything within it grinds to a halt and he begs his technology to have worked, for him not to die from stagnant blood and suffocation - drowning in air as a final testament to his <em>utter failure</em>. How long has it been? Should he be unconscious, or has the transfer taken that too? Five minutes. Five minutes until death, he knows this well, it is in every surgery book, how has it felt like <em>hours</em> as everything-</p><p>-Cyan eyes power on. His internals hum with electricity as the initial boot process looks for any errors to be patched. It finds none. He has done the impossible, and he feels…<br/>Viktor feels nothing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Repetition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A doozy. Warnings for existential horror and, to be safe, (attempted) suicide.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jayce wakes in a room that is not his own. It is a cheery enough room, yes, sunlight streaming in through an open window - <em>but it is not his room</em>. He wonders, briefly, if he’s been transferred to a hospice ward in the middle of the night. Piltover’s final act of self-serving generosity, letting him fade away with a caretaker rather than on his own.</p><p>But there is no attentive nurse at his side. No medical equipment at all, in fact.</p><p>Where he is is a mystery. A solvable mystery - he pushes himself up to a sitting position, and... wait. That’s not right. He shouldn’t have been able to do that so easily, and his arm…</p><p>His arm is metal.</p><hr/><p>It is gold and red, a color scheme and pattern that Jayce recognizes instantly. The Mercury Hammer is in some museum somewhere, now, but you don’t invent and fabricate something and not remember every inch of it. That’s concerning. This entire thing is concerning, because there is precisely one person who could do this.</p><p><em>Person</em> is a strong word for Viktor, especially as the man-made-robot is <em>currently in the doorway of the room</em>.</p><p>“What-“ and Jayce’s voice sounds different to his own ears, although he can’t tell why.</p><p>“You are operational,” Viktor says, approaching the bed. “That is good.”</p><p>“<em>What did you do to my arm?</em>”</p><p>Viktor takes a seat on the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand as if it could <em>ever</em> provide comfort. “You were going to die.”</p><p>“We all are! That doesn’t explain my-“ oh, gods.</p><p>He expects his lungs to be aching in pain from raising his voice. He expects a gasp after such an emotional sentence. Jayce expects to <em>breathe</em>, and yet…</p><p>He looks down at himself, all polished gold-and-crimson metal, and he screams.</p><hr/><p>Viktor, to his credit, waits for Jayce to finish screaming. His lamplight eyes are locked on Jayce’s own (are his eyes the same? Staring and soulless and-) as he sits.</p><p>“Are you done?”</p><p>“<em>Fuck you,</em>” and he hasn’t used that kind of language in years.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“You- I- <em>I was ready to die</em>. You... why can I <em>feel</em>...?”</p><p>“I did not think it ethical to remove them. Do you want them removed? There is an option - a switch, if you will.”</p><p>Viktor’s words might as well be in Zaunite, for how much they register. A switch. A choice. But it wasn’t really a choice, was it? It was an option in a story that still only had one end.</p><p>“Why did you do this to me. What <em>gave you the right</em>?”</p><p>“You were going to die. Your death would be a loss for the world, as your knowledge was never passed along to any students or offspring. It is better that you live.”</p><p>“What gave you the <em>right</em>, Viktor?!” he wants to lash out and hit the other robot, but... something deep within him is well-aware of the futility of that act. He settles for getting to his new feet.</p><p>“It is better for the world that you live. That is the right I was given.”</p><p>“And <em>I</em> don’t get a say?”</p><p>“I expected you to be happy. Why aren’t you happy? Do you not appreciate the design of your chassis?”</p><p>Jayce laugh-sobs at the comment. It’s quintessentially Viktor, isn’t it? This new Viktor, the one of circuit boards and electricity, the one who took over Zaun and closed its factories and <em>did not understand </em>why his countrymen would flee. Of course it’s the design. Why wouldn’t a man be happy to live forever?</p><p>The noise he makes is a garbled mess of static.</p><p>“Let me die. <em>Please</em>.”</p><p>“I cannot.”</p><p>“You <em>can</em>!”</p><p>“I cannot. Do you want to hear about the specifications of your new chassis?”</p><p>He nods dumbly, incapable of putting up much more of a fight. He can plan as Viktor speaks, think of a way out of this “living” hell. He has to.</p><p>“Your strength and dexterity are greatly improved in comparison to your old form, even in your youth. You have the capacity for multiple independent thought-processes due to the processing power I have given you. You will require recharging about once a week, but you do not need to be offline for the charge duration.”</p><p>Viktor talks in bullet-points, and all Jayce can hear in his words is the hum of static behind his voice. The sounds of oiled joints moving against one-another as Viktor shifts. He was going deaf before this, wasn’t he? But this... he is hearing as he never did before. It <em>hurts</em>.</p><p>“Your voice is synthesized from every newsreel recording of your public appearances I could recover. Many had deteriorated over time due to poor archival practices. It is a close match.”</p><p>That explains it. That explains why it is his-voice-but-not. He’d always put on a certain bravado for those interviews, a brash spin and a projection that are now the only way he can speak. His voice isn’t his own. It’s the Hero’s. His body isn’t his own. It is all modeled after the man he tried desperately to be for a city-state’s sake.</p><p>Jayce knows what he has to do. He puts on some of that old charm, the kind that works best with a cocky smile but will have to do with a smooth faceplate, and asks, “Would you let me be for a bit? It’s a lot to take in.”</p><p>Viktor nods and he nearly breaks out into a fresh fit of sobbing. Of <em>course</em>. It would be that easy, wouldn’t it? To trick a machine of a man, one so desperate-without-desperation to believe that his view was right? Confirmation bias. Viktor leaves the room.</p><p>If there is one thing to be thankful for in this mess, it is that his head isn’t clouded by age. It is easy enough to pry open one of the plates of his torso, easier still to find a bundle of cables that must function as his “spine”. Jayce does not hesitate for a moment as he pulls them as hard as he can, sheathed wires ripping and snapping and-</p><hr/><p>Jayce wakes in a room that is not his own...</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Childhood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Nothing much here in terms of warnings. Enjoy a younger Viktor.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Viktor Grigoryevich Pahlen is five years old when his father pulls him aside one evening. He will be starting school, soon - it is the summer, all low-hanging smog and trapped heat, and fall is coming sooner rather than later.</p><p>“Viktor,” Grigoriy says softly, looking at how his son is curled up on the chair opposite to him, “Viktor, look at me.”</p><p>Viktor’s face pops into view, no longer smushed against his shoulder in a position that both Grigoriy and Yekaterina find profoundly uncomfortable to look at. His hair sticks up at many angles: a testament to his tendency to squirm whenever Yekaterina tries to make him presentable. He’s pouting - but he is looking at Grigoriy. That’s progress.</p><p>“Your mother and I wanted to talk to you, before you start school in a few months,” and then it had been simply his job, but he is more well-suited to this than her, “about you.”</p><p>“But I’m me.”</p><p>“You are, yes, but…” and where to begin, “when you go with your mother to the store, or out in public, do you see that people are different than you?”</p><p>“Mh-hm. They’re bigger, because they’re adults.”</p><p>No. That’s not… it’s irrational, yes, but Grigoriy often wishes Viktor would simply grow up faster. He can explain surgeries while his gloves are deep within another living, breathing person but not genetic mutations to his own son because the language isn’t there. He has to repackage the medical journals and studies he’s read since the day Viktor was born into something that a child who has barely learned to write his letters correctly can understand.</p><p>Grigoriy tries again. “What about your hand, Viktor? Isn’t that different?”</p><p>Viktor shifts and stares at his left hand, all four pudgy fingers of it. If he were older, Grigoriy would explain that he is missing the fifth metacarpal and its associated phalanges… medical terms are so clear in a way this is not. But his son is young, and his words have to match.</p><p>“I guess,” and Viktor’s curled back in on himself again, voice muffled. “But I saw a man on the train who had no hand!”</p><p>“He probably lost it in an accident,” damn, that tone’s too sharp. “I mean to say… you’ve always had it.”</p><p>“Mh-hm!”</p><p>“And you know how your hair is different than others’, too.”</p><p>“Mom says that it’s thicker than the Kumungu.”</p><p>“…I’m sure she does,” probably while trying to corral Viktor into letting a brush so much as touch his head, much less a set of scissors. “But I meant the white streak. The white part.”</p><p>“Oh. But people have pink hair, I saw a woman-“</p><p>Grigoriy sighs. “It’s not natural, Viktor. Not like yours. And… you know how you sometimes get sick, yes?”</p><p>His son is practically a ball now, with his head tucked somewhere between his chest and knees. Do other children of this era do that? His coworkers have children in the workforce, now, and so the time to ask his peers is long-gone. Perhaps there are medical journals he can request, although the gods only know what keywords he could use.</p><p>“I don’t like that.”</p><p>“Neither do your mother and I. But it’s all the same, your hand and your hair and your stomach.”</p><p>“No it’s not.”</p><p>“Yes, it is.”</p><p>“Nuh-uh.”</p><p>“It is all from the same source, Viktor!” and that is the sound of Yekaterina dropping a pan into the sink - he shouldn’t have raised his voice. “It’s fine, dear,” Grigoriy calls to the other room.</p><p>Viktor has pulled himself out of the ball enough to focus his gaze on his father’s knee, or perhaps the hand resting on it. “…Sorry I made you mad.”</p><p>Oh… “It’s not you, Viktor. I’m…” just tired, just old, just out of my depth, “fine now. What I meant to say is that all of those are caused by the same thing. There’s…”</p><p>He has to explain genetics to a five-year-old, doesn’t he. That’s how this conversation ends. Maybe…</p><p>“I’ll be back.”</p>
<hr/><p>Yekaterina is still in the kitchen, putting the last of the night’s dishes on the drying rack. She’s tired, too - the hours Grigoriy spends at the hospital, in surgeries and consults and teaching, she spends with Viktor and her work. Her research laboratory wants her back soon. They’d been generous with letting her have time off after Viktor’s birth, and then let her work from home as he aged… but he’ll be enrolled in school soon enough and then she can return to the lab for six hours on every weekday.</p><p>The two of them had mutually decided that her work would be the one to take a back-seat to Viktor, although Grigoriy sometimes wonders if raising a child would be less stressful than his long hours. Probably not.</p><p>“Did you explain it to him?” she asks quietly, drying off her hands.</p><p>“…I’m trying. I thought some diagrams could help.”</p><p>That gets a small laugh from her. “Maybe they will. I can tell you realized you can’t just treat him like one of the visiting students. You can’t yell at him, for one.”</p><p>She probably didn’t intend for her comment to hurt. “He kept talking about the kinds of people he sees when you take him out. Drawing the wrong comparisons.”</p><p>“He’s five, dear, what else is he supposed to do? It’s our job to make sure he makes the right ones.”</p><p>Another heavy sigh, and he presses a kiss to her cheek. “You’re right. It’s just been a long day.”</p><p>“I tend to be,” and she kisses him in return, “now go get those diagrams.”</p>
<hr/><p>Grigoriy returns to the living room, holding a textbook as if it’s the key to immortality. It’s one from his undergraduate years, so it’s probably incredibly outdated in more than a few aspects - but he just wants it for the illustrations. He sits down across from Viktor, who’s currently splayed out in his chair like a ragdoll. Grigoriy notes the hypermobility of his son’s shoulders and elbows. That, too, is most likely tied to this topic of discussion.</p><p>“Viktor?” he asks, flipping through the book in search of the right page. “Can you come over here?”</p><p>Viktor rolls off of the chair with a thud but bounces to his feet only a moment after. He peers at the book with great interest. “What’s that?”</p><p>“It’s…” Grigoriy inhales, willing the words into place. “Your body is made up of a <em>lot</em> of little things called cells. They make up your skin, your hair, your brain… they make up you! In each-”</p><p>“But <em>I’m</em> me!” Viktor sounds indignant, as if the concept of cells is an affront to him.</p><p>“Ah… think of it like how… your arm is your arm, but it’s not all of you. You are more than just what makes you up. So, in-”</p><p>“Oh, okay.”</p><p>“<em>So</em>, in each of these cells is a lot of <em>these</em>,” he points to the illustration, a basic model of DNA. “This is DNA, and it tells your cells what to do. It makes sure that each cell is doing the right thing, so that eye cells are eye cells and… er, skin is skin… so on.”</p><p>This isn’t as easy as he thought it would be. Grigoriy looks over to his son, who is… utterly terrified. Oh dear.</p><p>“If it messes up, could I grow <em>hair</em> out of my <em>eyes</em>?” Oh no. He’s crying. “I don’t wanna have hair in my eyes!”</p><p>Yekaterina chooses that moment to poke her head through the doorway. “Vityusha, you won’t grow hair out of your eyes.”</p><p>Grigoriy shoots her a <em>look</em>. She returns it, greying eyebrow raised high, as she fully enters the room.</p><p>“Dad said I would!”</p><p>“Your dad didn’t say <em>anything</em> like that,” she replies, crouching down and embracing Viktor. “You won’t grow hair out of your eyes. I promise.”</p><p>A muffled “Okay...” comes from the general area of Yekaterina’s shoulder. Viktor worms away from the hug and wipes his eyes.</p><p>Grigoriy, by contrast, feels completely lost at sea. His wife gives him another meaningful look, kisses him on the cheek once more (to the disgusted groans of Viktor), and leaves. Where was he? Cells, DNA, right…</p><p>“So the DNA tells your cells what to do. It tells them how to look, which is why people have different colors of hair, skin, and eyes. Your DNA comes from your parents, which is why you look like your mom and I…”</p><p>“But I don’t! My hair!”</p><p>“Sometimes the DNA doesn’t… do its job,” Grigoriy adds, pointing to the diagram. “These pairs tell your DNA what to do. Sometimes they get… mixed up or damaged. Then you have a mutation. Sometimes these mutations are good, sometimes they are bad… ah, and so you have some mutations.”</p><p>“Are mine bad?”</p><p>Grigoriy squeezes his eyes shut. How is he supposed to answer this? <em>Yes, Viktor, they’re bad. You’re missing a finger and we had to have surgery done to give you a good quality-of-life. And even that didn’t fix everything.</em> That would just make his son convinced that he was somehow defective. <em>No, Viktor, they’re good. Some people dye their hair to look like what you have.</em> That was just a lie. Maybe some did, but <em>fashionable hair</em> wasn’t worth these costs…</p><p>“They… they’re just mutations. They don’t make <em>you</em> bad. They make you… unique. Special.”</p><p>“Oh!”</p><p>“And…” here is where the real point of this comes through, “sometimes, people may say rude things about your mutations. Like when you go to school in a few months.”</p><p>“Because I’m special and they’re not?”</p><p><em>That</em> is certainly one way to look at it. Should he dissuade Viktor from that line of reasoning? Tell him the truth: that children are cruel because their parents are, and that they will take any sign of weakness as a signal to attack? That Grigoriy and Yekaterina can’t be there for him at school, can’t defend him from unkind words and rumors? That he will carry these signs throughout his life, signs that Zaun’s atmosphere is toxic… signs that his parents, perhaps, were too old. That some would say that Viktor should not have been brought into this world.</p><p>How could Grigoriy ever package such harsh truths into something a child could understand? Maybe in a few years, maybe when Viktor is a teenager… maybe then he could be told these facts without them destroying him. He needs to be nurtured now, the flame of his curiosity tended to so it can grow into a fire. If this misbelief can guard him against those who would snuff his flame out, then there’s only one answer Grigoriy can give. He shuts the textbook with a thud.</p><p>“Yes, exactly that. So don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you’re anything else.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Homecoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lots of parental death and bad grieving here! Also a hint of suicidal thoughts.<br/>Should probably be read after Childhood to understand some specific things, but can be read on its own.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The house is owned by Grigoriy and Yekaterina Pahlen. It’s of a new construction, not quite built <em>for</em> them but instead built for people <em>like</em> them. The neighborhood is populated by younger faces, the sons and daughters of doctors and inventors and tycoons, the people that aren’t quite rich enough to appear in a magazine spread but are <em>comfortable</em> enough for homeownership when they’re hardly thirty. It’s a place meant for families, with several of their neighbors already raising toddlers.</p><p>They aren’t the average ones, here. They’re older by a few years, with dark circles under both their eyes. Work comes before almost anything else - Grigoriy is a surgeon, Yekaterina a techmaturgical researcher-inventor, and they are both busy enough rising through the ranks that the thought of a family is far from their minds. They have a few more years to stabilize their careers, set aside the needed money, and enter a new area of their lives. There is no need to rush: they see how the couples around them try to balance work and family, try to keep smiles on tired faces, and have mutually agreed that <em>planning</em> is wise.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Grigoriy and Yekaterina Pahlen. They are in their early forties, now, and the neighborhood toddlers have grown into neighborhood adolescents. The Pahlens are cordial to their neighbors, even as the late-thirty-somethings ask with sympathy if they’ve <em>tried</em> this-or-that and offer condolences. Truthfully, it’s their careers that are the trouble: they have been preparing and planning for a future so long that the future itself is slipping away.</p><p>But there is still time, a way to fit a family where only work and awards and accolades had been. Adjustments will be made. It is not too late. The house will feel less empty.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Pahlens. Viktor, their son - their <em>only</em> son, has been born. They wept with joy and then sorrow at his birth, at his face and then his hand and then the doctor’s later ruling, but he is <em>theirs</em>. Grigoriy blames himself. Yekaterina blames Zaun. But Viktor’s existence, albeit with some struggles, is a miracle in a way. He will grow up loved. Grigoriy sometimes wonders if they are perhaps <em>too</em> protective in their planning, but he only has to cast his mind to the hospital to assure him in this path.</p><p>Their neighbors are overjoyed, in that particular neighborly way, at Viktor. Several sigh wistfully and tell the Pahlens that they’ll soon miss these sleepless nights - because Viktor will grow up to spite them, even if for only a year or two. It’s the natural way of things.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Pahlens. Viktor had started school at almost the same time as the neighborhood once-children had entered college, and the children of Grigoriy and Yekaterina’s coworkers are building their careers. He is a bright child, although they would care for him just as much if he wasn’t, but he hasn’t made friends. Yekaterina assures her husband that she was much the same in <em>her</em> youth, preferring to read alone rather than socialize, but something still feels odd to Grigoriy. It is not that <em>he</em> was a social butterfly, either, but he can’t shake the feeling that Viktor’s isolation may not be self-imposed. Children are supposed to have at least <em>one</em> friend by age eight, are they not?</p><p>Viktor spends his evenings sprawled out in the living room, listening to the radio broadcast plays about brave men and women exploring the furthest reaches of space. His vocabulary, as a result, is better than that of his peers - although a bit hyperspecific (many a dinner-table conversation has been steered towards <em>warp engines</em> and <em>hyperspace</em> by Viktor’s spirited recountings) - and that is encouraging. He is happy, and happier still when he receives a subscription to one of the many pulp magazines that Zaun churns out. Yekaterina was of the opinion that it would give Viktor mistaken ideas about the field of techmaturgy, but acquiesced with a small laugh and a shake of her head.</p><p>He still hides behind his parents when they try to get him to speak with the neighbors, but he’s simply shy. It will fade with time.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Pahlens. Viktor has decided, at age twelve, to follow in his mother’s footsteps. He likes tinkering and building small mechanical oddities, and holds a soldering iron with the ease that a painter wields a brush. He is still skittish around the neighbors but seems to get along better with adults than his peers. Grigoriy still wonders, sometimes, if this is wrong - if he, at some point, had made a choice that prevented Viktor from making friends. Was he too protective? But Viktor is happy, although his happiness comes from reading and dreaming, and there can’t be anything too wrong with that.</p><p>The neighbors talk about how their houses feel too large for them, with their children moved out in pursuit of fame and fortune, and Grigoriy and Yekaterina can’t help but worry for the day that their home is empty once more.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Pahlens. Viktor’s teenage years have flown by in a blur of studying and a profound distaste for the idea of romance on campus - “school is for <em>learning</em>, not for kissing in the hallways” - and the promised schism between him and his parents has never occurred. There have been moments, of course, where he has called one of his parents <em>overbearing</em> - but he’s never slammed a door or sulked for more than a few hours.</p><p>He looks ecstatic in his graduation photo - the College of Techmaturgy has already accepted his application, and he speaks excitedly to Grigoriy and Yekaterina both of pursuing a doctorate. The question of dorm housing was raised only once, and quickly refused. Why, after all, would he spend money that <em>they</em> had saved to live in a crowded little room and eat food that will <em>surely</em> disagree with him in pursuit of some mythic college experience?</p><p>They silently thank the entities that Zaun half-heartedly believes in for such a son. Their neighbors are moving out, being replaced by younger faces that Viktor never introduces himself to. The houses that felt too large for only a couple are filled with new families.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Pahlens. Viktor is twenty-two, and Yekaterina’s health is failing. It should not have been unexpected - a lifetime in Zaun is shorter than a lifetime elsewhere - but Viktor seems overwhelmed by the idea of his mother <em>passing</em>. It wouldn’t happen this soon, would it? There are years left, he has only just graduated with the second degree of many, his story only begun. Wouldn’t she have to stay for it?</p><p>Yekaterina adds to the collection of letters that she has written.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Grigoriy Pahlen. His grief is devastating, and Viktor hardly drags himself to the classes that once felt so important. It is possible to die of a broken heart, Grigoriy knows, and he puts his hand to his chest as he places Yekaterina’s urn in the study. It is where she would want to be.</p><p>He is older than she was, but he will continue for Viktor’s sake. Were they selfish, to have a child at their ages? Dooming him to <em>this</em>? But Viktor is strong - even now, he continues on. He’ll save the world, one day. Grigoriy doesn’t say this in the way that all parents talk of their children: he knows it deep in his heart, that Viktor is destined for greatness. Viktor talked (back before this, before the family was cleaved painfully in two) about clearing away the waste that choked Zaun, making robots smart enough to handle the most dangerous tasks. No more people would suffer.</p><p>Grigoriy writes his letters, too. Viktor will read them - hopefully, on a day far in the future - and he will have written, permanent proof that he is loved. Words carry on longer than a human lifespan.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor Pahlen.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor Pahlen. It was willed to him, as everything was, but he lives in the dormitories of the College of Techmaturgy. The new neighbors assume that the house is owned by shut-ins, and the few remaining old ones don’t have the heart to correct them.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor Pahlen. He has healed enough, moved on enough, that the thought of it doesn’t bring him to tears. But he’ll never go back - he’ll pay the bills as they are delivered to his mailbox, but he will never live there again.</p><p>He is the leader of his doctoral project. Some criticized his choice, calling it idealistic, but Professor Pididly (Stanwick, <em>just</em> Stanwick, but Viktor finds it hard to not be formal) says that a waste-management robot is just the sort of thing that Zaun needs. Viktor will dedicate it to his parents, if he is allowed. If he is not, he will at least <em>know</em> who it is for. The work is stressful, but it blocks everything else from his mind. It will lead him to fame and recognition and appreciation, and perhaps he can fill the empty parts of him with that.</p><p>He has not read the letters.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor Pahlen. Newspapers proclaim the success of Dr. Stanwick Pididly (and his stalwart, but interchangeable, team of doctoral students) in creating a new kind of robot: one that thinks and reasons just as any man would. Viktor fights the claim as a man would fight for his very survival, hiring a lawyer with money that feels like it should never be spent. It, after all, is an inheritance - something to save and treasure and be unable to look at as it rips open the void in his heart to even <em>consider</em> it.</p><p>His lawyer tells him to enter the courtroom with his chin held high. His lawyer tells him to hold in the rage he feels, and Viktor manages to well enough until <em>Stanwick</em> looks across the courtroom and smiles a smile that used to make Viktor feel at ease but now makes him want to leap across the room with his mismatched hands outstretched to-</p><p>His lawyer tells him that any hint of aggression will lose them the case.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor. He lives in it now, a ghost surrounded by dust and artifacts of another life. The worst of them - the family photos, the letters, the urns - have been put away into his parents’ room, where their pain is lessened. He sleeps in his childhood bedroom for a sense of the familiar, trying to grasp at a future that seems just as distant and unreachable as the stars. The neighbors he sees through shuttered windows are wholly unfamiliar. Some hardly look older than he is. Do they think that this house is empty, waiting for another perfect family to scratch the floors and dent the baseboards and <em>live</em>?</p><p>He’s not sure when he first wanted to die. Isn’t he dead, already? To be alive is to live in others’ minds, and he is well-aware that Zaun’s collective consciousness has no time for him. He is the last of a pruned-down family tree. There is nothing higher in his life than stumbling through the days like a worn-out automaton, performing acts that mean nothing and do even less.</p><p>Outside, neighbors comment on lights left on late at night and the rare silhouette of a gaunt man. Children scare each other with tales of a ghost, and adults wave the sightings off as nothing more than malfunctioning electrical systems and odd shadows. The man who lived there before - or was it a family? - had left over half a decade previous. Did their family name start with a V? A B? A P? No one knows, and why would they? The people who <em>would</em> know are long-gone, downsized to another neighborhood in another part of Zaun. As for the house: someone (perhaps some eccentric businessman, collecting houses like how children collect cards) must pay the utilities, yes, but they certainly don’t <em>live</em> there.</p><p>Someone would have seen them, after all.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by Viktor. He works with the frantic energy of a man with a revelation of earth-shattering importance: that, of course, is exactly what he is. He can still fix himself, and the world with him. It is a matter of cutting away the excess fat to leave only clear, shining metal. A metaphor and a truth. He writes his schematics and calculations with the manic pride of a visionary, marks his flesh with the grace of a surgeon. There are sparks and flashes of light as he crafts the tools of his liberation, and he often tries to smother them down in fits of paranoia.</p><p>No one can know of him until he is ready, until his inventions can <em>never</em> be separated from his person. He will isolate for months, the pantry meant for three overstocked for one, pursuing perfection through metal. He can’t delude himself into believing that there will be <em>fanfare</em>, but there <em>will</em> be praise in enough time - praise for the man who fixed humanity’s flaws. He will have a new persona, a new start, a new face fabricated from alloys to hide the one that had been splashed across Zaun’s newspapers.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Machine Herald. The neighbors are unsure of when he moved in - was <em>he</em> the man that their children had seen in the upstairs windows years ago? Was <em>he</em> the cause of those flickering lights behind windowblinds? They are afraid, of course - he preaches to the papers about excising emotion, of the superiority of metal over the frailties of flesh, and yet… He is a hermit, first and foremost.</p><p>Truthfully, the neighborhood only knows that he’s there due to his late-night and early-morning comings and goings, and the lights. If not for one of them catching his cloaked figure stalking towards the city proper one winter morning, none of them would have paid attention enough to see him again. Parents warn their children to stay far away from the once-empty house, and bury their own worries deep in their hearts. He has not hurt anyone, yet, and perhaps he won’t if they simply don’t provoke him.</p><p>So the house, and the man-made-machine in it, is left alone.</p>
<hr/><p>The house is owned by the Machine Herald, and no one but him remembers Grigoriy and Yekaterina Pahlen and their son Viktor.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Gambit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No warnings here. Uploaded here after quite some time and further thought on Viktor and Caitlyn's relationship - the relationship's changed in its history as I've written more with a friend of mine, so this is a little outmoded as a result. I still like it quite a lot, though.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caitlyn isn’t sure what to call this - the dynamic between her and Viktor. It isn’t one of officers and criminals, of bringing someone with flaws before the rehabilitative light of justice. (Viktor has committed only one crime, as far as she is aware, and he has suffered enough as a result.) It isn’t one of formal dancing, of whirling about one-another in synchronicity for the purpose of a greater art. (She dances for galas, hair pinned back and smile painted. He doesn’t dance at all.)</p><p>She’s one for schemata. If there isn’t a framework for their relationship in all of literary canon, she will make one. They are not enemies, not rivals, not friends, not lovers, not confidants, not peers, not a whole host of descriptors that she carefully sorts her connections into until they make an itemized and color-coded map. What do you call someone that you sit in silence with? What do you call someone who has also taken their anger and rage and honed it into something to pave the way for a better tomorrow? There are still too many unknowns.</p><hr/><p>She is in Viktor’s house, of all places. Their visits had slowly moved from his laboratory to his home, gentle nudge after gentle nudge until she found herself sitting in a paper-strewn living room. Viktor is off in the kitchen, preparing tea, and she has been left to sit and wonder at the absurdity of it all. He plays host well enough, offering tea and <em>sushki</em>, but they are both aware of how this all appears. He takes no tea, eats no snacks, and sits quietly with the illuminated lenses of his mask staring out into the world. Most others would find it unnerving.</p><p>Caitlyn’s eye catches on something tucked away in the corner of the room, nearly hidden beneath stacks of books and papers. It’s a chessboard, of all things, made of once-polished wood. Zaun is known for its grandmasters (Piltover, too, albeit to a lesser extent) and so it’s not <em>unlikely</em> for Viktor to play… but judging from the condition and context of the board, he hasn’t in some time. Who would he play with, after all, if his idea of socialization is tea in silence?</p><p>She knows a good deal about him, although it is mostly information from microfiche newspaper archives and official documents that she obtained with some extrajudicial pressure. Viktor Grigoryevich Pahlen, or perhaps it is Viktor Grigoryevich <em>Palen</em>, or <em>Victor </em>Grigoryevich Pahlen, or some hitherto-unseen combination, is thirty-four years old and the only child of Grigoriy Vasilyevich Pahlen and Yekaterina Alexandrovna Pahlena. He should, by all rights, have a doctoral degree and be heralded as the mind behind the first sentient robot. Instead he preaches about the weaknesses of the flesh and envisions a future free of human flaw and vice.</p><p>Caitlyn couldn’t have helped but pity him as she had read through his life, copies of documents and transcripts and wills spread out around her. How could she not? He was a man ruined by Zaun - and, truthfully, a man who would have been ruined by Piltover as well. But what she knew was still so <em>little</em> in the grand scheme of things, limited by her inability to fully translate what she’d obtained. Limited by the fact that all the documents and reports on someone could never contain their entirety, only a rubber-stamped facsimile.</p><p>So the chess set was interesting. Had he played it with his father, when he was young? His mother?</p><hr/><p>Viktor returns, teacup and saucer held in a gloved hand. He sets them down before her without a word.</p><p>“Do you play chess?” she asks softly, watching the steam rise.</p><p>He freezes, glances towards the chess set, and relaxes. “Upon occasion.”</p><p>She could end the conversation here, return to their usual sitting in silence (she has brought over paperwork, as per usual, and it isn’t getting any more completed) and the askew familiarity of it. But… “Would you like to play a match?”</p><p>He <em>stares</em>, or at least seems to, before turning stiffly and uncovering the set. “I was unaware that you played.”</p><p>“Upon occasion,” Caitlyn says with a small, unseen, smile.</p><p>Viktor doesn’t laugh - she didn’t expect him to - but his shoulders do shift ever-so-slightly. He places the chess set down on the coffee table, head tilting over to his familiar chair. Decision seemingly made, he sits on the floor instead with an artificial knee drawn to his chest. He draws open the storage compartment of the board, taking out the black king.</p><p>“Do you have objections to playing white?”</p><p>“No,” she replies, placing down a rook.</p><p>They set up the board quickly enough, and Caitlyn opens with a flank. Viktor follows suit, and the game is off. He’s a good opponent, obviously versed in various openings and gambits, and knows enough theory to keep her on her toes. It’s only after she makes her first blunder that she takes a mental step back from the game, breathing out and reevaluating. Viktor waits patiently.</p><p>She starts noticing things in earnest after that, even in the intensity of the match. How Viktor’s left hand jerks upwards, just a hair, after he places his pieces, how he draws his knee closer to himself on her turns, how his third arm moves in something that is almost a nervous tic, how he is <em>distracted</em>. Not to the point of being outright sloppy, of course, but enough that she can set up her pieces for a move ten or so rounds ahead. Of course he can’t fully devote himself to the game - there will always be something in the back of his head about prostheses, transhumanism, an idealistic future where he plays the role of a philosopher-king. (Caitlyn is closer to that backburner obsession than most realize.) So she presses the advantage, playing her moves faster and faster until he <em>finally</em> missteps without a subsequent recovery.</p><p>He keeps playing past the point where they <em>both</em> have realized the inevitable outcome, keeps playing until she knocks over his king with a soft “checkmate”.</p><p>“...A good game,” Viktor finally says, lenses firmly fixed on the nearly empty board.</p><p>“You can take white next,” she offers, already knowing his answer.</p><p>“Not today. Your tea is cold.”</p><p>“So it is.”</p><p>They put away the pieces and Viktor returns the board to its place. Silence falls once again, except for the singing of the samovar as Viktor prepares her a fresh cup of tea. Caitlyn leaves two hours later, paperwork completed and stored away in her satchel, and returns to Piltover with her head more clouded and more cleared than she left it.</p><p>The next time she shows up at Viktor’s door, the chessboard is already set up with her as black.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Departure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings for parental death and manipulation. Based off of an RP/backstory with a friend who writes Caitlyn.<br/>(Her and Viktor knew each other in university, as she snuck over to Zaun to attend lectures - trying to get  the whole picture of the world, rather than just the polished and neat Piltover side of things. Sadly, time and her status as an officer of the law and then the Sheriff of Piltover took a toll on the friendship... You can't stand up for a Zaunite when you're the representative of a city that has a friendly rivalry with Zaun at best and outright hatred at worse. You can't admit that you knew him at all.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zaunite funerals are not a particularly involved affair. There is no religion here that would dictate last rites, nor would she have wanted them. The crematorium simply gives the father and son an enameled urn and sends them on their way.</p><p>Viktor clutches it to himself until they’re finally home.</p><p></p><div class="media-holder media-holder-draggable media-holder-hr">
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</div><p>The house is meant for three, and now there are only two. Grigoriy works long shifts at the hospital. Viktor throws himself into his doctoral program. His thesis is still taking shape. (Yekaterina was so proud, even as her skin turned waxy and pale. Even as her hands shook more and more.) He has to continue on for her sake, even as he spends his nights red-eyed and sobbing.</p><p>He hasn’t told Caitlyn. They don’t speak of their families, and he knows that she is busy with her work. With the police force. It would be far too much of a burden for someone who he so rarely sees these days.</p><p>[My mother died.] No.</p><p>[Have you ever lost someone?] No.</p><p>[I sleep poorly.] No.</p><p>[I miss you.] No.</p><p>He never finds the right words to send. His doctoral work continues on. His father’s so proud of him. Stanwick’s so proud of him.</p><hr/><p>It takes only a few months. Viktor isn’t sure on the number, because the days keep blurring into each other. But it takes less than a semester, and then he stands at the crematorium again with another urn clutched in his shaking arms. He goes home to an empty house and lays on the floor of the living room until light stops coming through the windows. Then he gets up, takes one urn and then the other in his hands, and puts them in the empty bedroom. He strips the sheets from the bed, although it takes hours to carry the action out, and washes them. He puts them back on the bed.</p><p>His hexphone chimes. Caitlyn is telling him about her day. He types something that he doesn’t remember in response and leaves the room. It’s not his. He shouldn’t be in there.</p><hr/><p>Stanwick understands. One death in the family is hard enough - he knows, he lost his grandfather when he was about Viktor’s age - but two? Two, when they’re the only family Viktor has? Of course he can delay on his work. Of course he can explore other options, like those prostheses he had once mentioned. Of course, of course, of course. He can take his time.</p><p>The prostheses are far too invasive, even if they’re ingenious in their design. Viktor scraps the concept after a long bleary-eyed night. He’ll join that team that Stanwick is advising, if they’d have him.</p><p>They’ll do more than have him, Stanwick says kindly. They’ll follow his lead.</p>
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